Project kangaroo was pronounced dead in February after the Competition Commission decided it would create a monopoly.

However, the technology still exists and is up for sale.

It now looks like the mobile phone company Orange is set to buy it in order to boost its European Orange TV effort.

Project Kangaroo

There was huge buzz last year surrounding Project Kangaroo, a new online video-on-demand service from the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. This joint venture between Britain’s three most popular broadcasters was intended to bring online video to the masses and become a one-stop shop in a similar vein to Hulu in the States.

Unfortunately, in its wisdom, the Competition Commission decided to kill the venture stone dead after it received complaints from rival broadcasters, namely BSkyB and Virgin Media. The reasoning behind the effective banning of the project was that it would threaten competition to too great a degree when the market is still emerging.

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Music videos have been an important part of YouTube for a good while now, being amongst the most-watched videos on the site. But money, or the lack of it, was starting to get in the way of music videos being shared on the site. Enter VEVO, a new online hub purely for music videos.

A Long Time Coming

It was over a month ago that news of VEVO first leaked but it’s now official. YouTube (or Google if you’d prefer) and Universal Music are teaming up to create a new site intended solely as the place to watch music videos.

This has actually been a long time coming. The original revenue-sharing deals signed by the major record labels back in 2006 and 2007 have or are coming to an end. Now that they have seen quite how popular and traffic-generating music videos can be they want a better deal than the few-cents-per-play they were rumored to have been getting.

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Google has got to think big if it’s to turn YouTube from the money pit it has become into something profitable and worth owning. The move from UGC to premium content is already under way and Sony could be about to boost the library with full-length movies from its vast back catalog.

A YouTube Evolution

YouTube has slowly but surely been evolving ever since Google bought it for $1.65 billion back in 2006. But the small changes: more HD options, more advertising efforts, a faster clean-up rate of copyrighted content - hasn’t actually done much in terms of revenue. Sure, the traffic is better than ever but it looks like the site will still make a loss for its parent company this year.

The fact is that the world has moved on somewhat from what YouTube is famous for - short-form user-generated content. We now have Hulu and the BBC iPlayer providing us with streaming options of bang-up-to-date television and movie content, making YouTube look like the poor man of online video.

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Disney has suddenly become a key member of the battle for viewers raging between Hulu and YouTube, by doing deals with both. While YouTube is confirmed to be getting short-form Disney content, the as-yet-unconfirmed Hulu deal is about long-form content and partnership.

There’s a war brewing, with Hulu on one side and YouTube on the other. At the moment, the sides are not exactly matched, with one offering mostly user-generated content and the other offering premium programming. But as YouTube looks set to redesign in order to better serve episodic content, the battle lines are being drawn.

Disney has decided to send its troops into battle, but has rather bizarrely chosen to fight for both sides.

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From today, you can download a newly-released feature film through any one of a number of peer-to-peer networks. That’s not news, obviously, because that happens every day of the year, with both new and old movies and television content finding its way on them. But there’s one big difference this time, the filmmakers are happy about it.

Millions of people now use torrent trackers to search-for and obtain copies of content they want, be it in the form of movies, television episodes, music, or whatever. It has to be said, a fair proportion of this content being shared is having its copyright infringed upon, and in that sense, is being illegally obtained.

A Question Of Legality

The majority of people don’t see piracy as being wrong, and The Pirate Bay has recently defended itself in court by arguing it is doing nothing wrong by being one of the links in the chain that allows it to happen. But the actions are illegal by virtue of most countries’ laws.

Let us not forget however that a lot of the content shared over the Internet is being shared legally, with no copyright infringement taking place. A year ago this month, we detailed how the Norwegian broadcaster, NRK, chose to distribute its show, Nordkalotten 365, via BitTorrent. The experiment to use P2P as a distribution tool was regarded as a complete success.

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Money is key. It’s a shame that is the case but true nevertheless. And this adage is having a direct influence on the online video sector - from why YouTube is constantly engaged in battle with copyright holders to why Hulu no longer supports Boxee.

Money Is Everything?

It’s a sad fact of life that money is of the utmost importance in almost everything we do. Being in relationships, having kids, and enjoying life are all directly influenced by money. And of course, jobs and the art of business thrive or otherwise on how much money is generated.

Almost every decision taken can be influenced by money, how much you have, how much you want, how much it’ll cost, how much it’ll make. Television is no exception. Whether a show gets canceled or recommissioned comes down to how many people are watching, and consequently, how much revenue it is drawing in.

Online Video Revenue

Therefore, it stands to reason that online video, particularly that supplied by traditional media and television companies is also dependent on the same market forces. Unfortunately, so far at least, online video is failing to pay its way.

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Three issues have converged this week: YouTube’s inability to make revenue, the continuing fight between the PRS and YouTube, and Rickrolling.

What has multi-millionaire Pete Waterman got to say about it all?

Rickrolling

The chances are you’re aware of a song called Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. The reason being this is the song that has become a viral hit due to the Rickrolling meme which has been running for a couple of years now.

For those totally in the dark, a Rickroll works by inviting you to click on a link, either for an interesting video, or something completely different, and then instead taking you to the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up, complete with Rick Astley doing his cheesy 1980s dancing.

Big Business

Rickrolling has been a huge craze, which is thankfully dying out now. But not before Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of The House Of Representatives, used it to draw traffic. Rick Astley even won an MTV Europe Music Award for ‘Best Act Ever’ after an intense online voting campaign by his fans.

Why is Rickrolling suddenly back in the headlines? Because due to the ongoing battle between the Performing Rights Society and YouTube over how much money the latter should pay the former each time a music video is viewed on the site, the co-songwriter of the Rick Astley classic has decided to go public with his views on the whole thing.

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